I thought there were 6 of them in the very beginning & I'm not sure if their treatment of Stu was that much better than that of the others that left!?

Well in the very very beginning there was 6 of them of course, but I meant after Brian hired ALO to take control of them and when they started to record in the studio. When Stu was a member they were still wearing training wheels and not out of the starting gate yet as far as making it as a big time band. But if you just take that time period only, they were clearly only under the guide and leadership of Jones alone in those earliest of days. Once ALO came along and fired Stu, and then got the Glimmers together to write songs, everything started to change, and that's when the band started to take off and where I meant that they started out. I just should had just worded that as: "started to become big", and when they started to become big, all 5 were important in their own way, even if only for the very first record.

As far as Stu's treatment went, the entire band as a group treated him wrong when he was fired, period - no question about it, that was the fault of all 5 of them in the band - along with ALO who demanded it. But I think every Stone after that felt bad in what they did to him after that one time, and after that they all treated him like gold - up until the day he died. So overall, after they were forced to fired him, after that one mistreatment, he was clearly treated better than Bill, Charlie and Brian by the Glimmers. They never once put him down and only praised him after that.

F wrote

DW was a great album--it wasn't

As bad as DW was (and in some ways it was even worst than we might realize at least on a musical note), it also was the LP that kept them together in the end. They almost broke up at that time when they were making that LP, but it wasn't because of DW, it was because of Mick not wanting to be a Stone anymore and his wanting to go solo. But the other 4 Stones wanted to see the band go on, as did the fans, and MJ's solo albums were total failures as far as he was concerned, and clearly as far as sales went. Then after the release of DW, the LP was so bad (and everybody knew it as soon as it came out) that they could only go up from there - and they did and wanted to after it's release, especially once Jagger realized the band was still his best bet for continued stardom, as he saw after his 2 solo LPs crashed, that he wasn't ever gonna make it on his own, so he started to concentrate on the Stones again once they got past DW.

CCH wrote:

Because I'm not trained or even that interested I've never remotely been able to pick up which guitarist is playing though I can just about pick out Charlie's drums most of the time from the guitars!

Come on CCH, you have to know Keith's sound at least, his guitar is as much a trademark sound of the Stones as MJ's voice is. Ronnie, MT, and BJ's electric guitars never sounded like Keith's did, never. So since day one, there's always been that one guitar sound that always been in the Stones, at least when we talk about electric guitar sounds. Now when they played their acoustic guitars, okay, it is hard to tell the difference between Brian and Keith's playing on acoustic, yes, but when I talk about the Stones true trademark sound, I mean when electric guitars are heard only, and Keith has that special sound coming from his guitar that only he ever made with an electric guitar.

Note: Do not hit the "Post Message" button more than once, even if it is taking a long time to post your message. Doing so may cause a double post to appear and could slow down your posting time even more.